Pope hopes CAR talks will avoid civil war

Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday he hoped
Central African Republic peace talks would spare the country's residents from
"reliving the throes of another civil war".

"I hope that the talks announced as taking place
shortly will restore stability and spare the people from reliving the throes of
civil war," Benedict said ahead of the talks.

Negotiations between Central African Republic rebels and
President Francois Bozize are due to start on Tuesday in the capital of Gabon
in a bid to end the month-long crisis in the impoverished and coup-prone state.

In a speech to the ambassadors of the Holy See, 85-year-old
Benedict also encouraged efforts to build peace in sub-Saharan Africa.

"I think particularly of the Horn of Africa, and the
east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where new of acts of violence
have erupted, forcing many people to abandon their homes, families and
surroundings," he said.

Among "other threats looming on the horizon", the
pontiff lamented violence in Nigeria, which is "regularly the scene of
terrorist attacks which reap victims above all among the Christian faithful
gathered in prayer."

It is, he said, "as if hatred intended to turn temples
of prayer and peace into places of fear and division."

"I was deeply saddened to learn that, even in the days
when we celebrated Christmas, some Christians were barbarously put to
death," Benedict added.

During a Christmas Eve service, gunmen attacked a church in north-eastern
Yobe state, killing six people, including the pastor, before setting the
building ablaze.

The attack was followed days later by further violence that
saw attackers slit the throats of 15 Christians in a pre-dawn raid.